


Beginnings

by chiiyo86



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 06:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: On her way to Whitestone to meet with Vox Machina as they're coming back from the Hells, Pike reminisces about her family.





	Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [recarmloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/recarmloss/gifts).



> I hope this is a satisfying gift! Thanks to [sevenofspade](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade) for her help.

The slow pace of the rickety cart was lulling Pike to sleep. Lying on her back, she’d been watching the lazy course of the clouds in the sky for what felt like hours. She could remember many more hours of playing ‘what does this cloud look like?’ with Grog when they were both kids. Grog’s guesses were always the wildest, challenging her imagination at every turn.

They’d left Emon two days ago and the journey had been mostly uneventful, save for one of the cart’s wheels breaking and needing repair early in the trip. As soon as she’d heard about it Pike had jumped at the opportunity of a trip to Whitestone. She wanted to help Sarda and the children get back safely to the capital, of course she did, but she would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit to hoping that Vox Machina would be back from their adventures in the Hells by the time she got to the city. Of all the times she’d been separated from her party, this one was the most excruciating.

Pike shifted uncomfortably, thinking for the hundredth time that she should have tried to go with them. Killing that Rakshasa was partly for her sake, and although she knew that her friends wouldn’t think twice about risking their lives for hers she couldn’t help being ashamed for not coming along. But helping with the reconstruction of Emon was a way to honor Sarenrae, and it was always a struggle to try to balance out her loyalty to her friends with service to her goddess. Also… Pike scrunched her nose as a vaguely devil-shaped cloud floated over her head; it looked like it was sneering at her. 

Also, if she was honest with herself, she was afraid of how the Hells might influence her. She knew the others thought of her as some sort of angel of purity and she would hate to disappoint them.

 _How are they doing right now? Are they all right? Are they_ alive? _Do they need a cleric to heal them and I’m not there to help?_

So many of them had died at least once already. How long had it been since she’d met them all for the first time? She could remember the day an odd mismatched party had knocked on her door looking for Grog so clearly. At the time it had simply seemed obvious to her that she needed to go with them and save her best friend. And then she had fit with them in a way she hadn’t known she could fit with a group, the way she didn’t fit with her family at large. 

She remembered…

\---

 _Vax, Vex. Vex, Vax. Vax is the one on the right, and Vex the one on the left? Which one is the girl again?_ Pike shook her head. It was embarrassing that she’d been travelling with these people for a few weeks now and still seemed unable to tell the half-elf twins apart. As they were all trudging up a hill, hunched against the battering rain, she wasn’t even sure she could tell which one was the male twin and which was the female one. Neither of them had been very forthcoming with her. They both kept to themselves and each other, and acted pretty wary with everyone else. Maybe it was something about their past. Maybe it was a twin thing—Pike had never met any other pair of twins before. But one of them had a tear at the bottom of their satchel and Pike thought she needed to point it out before the content of the bag spilled to the ground. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what name to use.

“Grog!” she called under her breath, trotting up to her big friend. “Grog!”

“What is it, Pike?” Grog rumbled, way too loudly for Pike’s taste. She’d hoped she could make a quiet inquiry. “Are you tired? Do you need me to pick you up?”

“No, no, I’m all right. But…” She swept her dripping hair from her eyes, and then glanced ahead and back. The twins were leading the way, as was often the case, while Keyleth and Tiberius, the druid and the Dragonborn, were engrossed in an animated discussion and Scanlan was bringing up the rear. “Come here,” she said to Grog, flicking her fingers to make him bow down to her. “I want to tell something to one of the twins, but I’m not sure about the name… What’s the one on the right called again?”

“Uhh, Vex?”

Pike nodded. Vex was the girl twin, wasn’t she? “Okay, thank you. I guess that means that the one of the left is…”

“Vex?” Grog said, probably thinking she was asking for his opinion again. 

Pike furrowed her brow. “Grog, they’re not both called Vex.”

“Aren’t they? I thought they were.”

“They can’t be. They have to have different names.”

“But they look the same,” Grog argued in the tone of voice he used when he thought he was being very reasonable. 

Pike sighed, acknowledging a battle lost in advance. “All right, thank you, Grog. I’ll go talk to them.”

She had to break into a jog to catch up to the twins and their annoyingly long legs. 

“Hey, wait up! V’x!”

She’d made the vowel in the name as indistinct as she could, and, unsurprisingly, both twins turned around to watch her run up to them. They looked impossibly alike with their narrow, pointy faces, their long black hair matted by the rain, and the guarded way they gazed at her.

“Yeah?” one of them said. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, nothing serious, but I just noticed that, hmm, you have a hole in your satchel.”

The twins looked at each other, and then at Pike. “Both of us?”

“No, no, only one of you… Vex?” Surely they’d heard the uncertainty in her voice, and Pike felt herself redden from embarrassment. 

The twins shared another long look, and then Pike saw the one on the left—the male one, if his voice was any indication—start to frown. “Are you looking at her? Because I’m Vex. Honestly, how hard is it to keep straight?”

“Pff, what are you saying? Don’t listen to him, Pike, I’m Vex.”

“Stop trying to confuse her, Vax!”

“Stop throwing ‘Vax’ at me, Vax.”

“Stop calling me ‘Vax’, Vex!”

Bewildered, Pike watched the twins bicker until the names ‘Vax’ and ‘Vex’ started to blur together and lose all meaning. For a moment it looked like they’d forgotten she was even there.

“Um, guys—” Pike started, and the twins stopped fighting at once to focus on her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my fault. I simply can’t tell which one of you is Vex.”

Unexpectedly the twins burst out laughing, and again Pike was left floundering, unsure of what to say or do and wondering how she’d managed to trigger the twins’ hilarity. 

“Aww, Pike,” the girl twin said, sweeping a finger at the corner of her eye. “We’re the ones who are sorry.”

“We were just pulling your leg,” her brother said. “You’re not the first person to mix up our names. Because, really, I wonder what our mother was thinking.”

“All right,” Pike said. Her face still felt warm, but the twins’ laughter was infectious and a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth in spite of herself. “Sooo, who’s Vex and who’s Vax, then?”

“I’m Vex, and my idiot brother is Vax.”

The twin—Vex—looked genuine enough and Pike relaxed. “Vex,” she said, “there’s a hole at the bottom of your satchel.”

Vex looked down and assessed the damage, rubbing a finger over the hole. “Aw, that’s annoying.” Then she smiled sweetly at Pike. “Thanks, Pike.”

Vax cuffed Pike’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

Pike beamed at the twins, feeling pretty accomplished—not because she’d successfully warned Vex about the tear in her bag, but because she’d finally managed to make the half-elf siblings look back at her and smile.

\---

As dusk settled the caravan to Whitestone stopped and they started setting up their camp quickly. Most of the party leading the caravan were soldiers, and they were used to the task. They were a friendly bunch, and they treated Pike with a reverence that disconcerted her sometimes. She’d ascribed it to her status as a cleric at first, until one of the soldiers approached her as they were all sitting down around the fire, sharing food. 

“I heard you’re part of Vox Machina. Is that right?” he asked her.

Pike blinked at him. He was a young human male, maybe a couple of years younger than Percy, with pale freckled skin and a mop of vividly red hair. He had a disarming smile and his eyes sparkled with the light of hero worship. 

“Indeed I am,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

“You are my heroes!” the young man enthused. “Vox Machina, Dragon Slayers!”

“Oh, well, it’s not like we’re specialists or—” Pike cut herself off. After killing five ancient dragons, ones that had ravaged the continent, it seemed fair that people would call them dragon slayers. Slaying dragons was all in the title’s description.

“Keyleth of the Air Ashari! Vex’halia and Vax’ildan! Percival Fredrickstein—” Pike contained her smile as the young man stumbled over Percy’s name. “Grog _Strongjaw_!”

Hearing the added fervor in that last name, Pike said, “You seem to really like Grog.”

“Goliaths are the coolest! Is it true that he can lift an entire _house_?”

Pike kept herself from chuckling, thinking that she was glad Grog wasn’t here for this, or he would take it as a challenge. “Possibly true,” she said. “Did you know that I grew up with him?”

“Oh, really?”

“Do you want to hear some childhood stories?” When she got an enthusiastic nod in response, she went on, “Grog saved my grandfather Wilhand from his compatriots, but then was beaten almost to death in retaliation. I was the one who nursed him back to health. At the time, I was only starting to learn healing…”

\---

The Goliath—whose name was Grog, if Pike had been able to decode his grumbling correctly—looked very young, although Pike didn’t know enough about Goliaths to be able to tell how young exactly. Even then, he was about three times Pike’s size and she wasn’t strong enough to move him on her own. She needed to wash him, though, because after a week he was starting to stink something fierce, so much that her eyes watered when she got too close to him. There was no other choice but to try to wake him up. 

She wasn’t very good at healing spells yet, and he’d been really close to death, so he’d spent the whole week since Wilhand had brought him back sleeping most of the time. She wasn’t afraid of him—she _wasn’t_ , because he’d saved Wilhand so that meant he couldn’t be a bad person, deep down. But he was big and strange and she didn’t know how he would react to waking up to an unfamiliar place and an unfamiliar face. 

“Grog,” she whispered to his ear. “Grog, would you please wake up?”

She nudged one of his big, muscular shoulders, so gently that he probably felt her no more than you would feel a mosquito bite. She tried again, putting more strength to it. 

“Grog!”

He grumbled, the sound low and rumbling like the growl of a beast. She called his name again and he finally opened his eyes, blinking slowly. 

Pike waited patiently for his eyes to focus on her before she smiled and said, “Hi, my name is Pike. I’m the one who healed you, and now I need you to help me wash you.”

He looked at her without speaking for so long that she wondered if he understood Common. “Wot?” he finally said. 

Disconcerted, Pike lost her bright smile. Did he have some brain damage that she’d failed to heal? “I’m Pike,” she said.

“Pike,” he repeated. “Pike.” He seemed to be tasting the name like it was some strange food. He looked her up and down. “You’re very little.”

“Oh, uh, I guess I am. I’m a gnome.” He gave her a bland uncomprehending look. “Like my grandfather, Wilhand. The old gnome that you saved?”

“Saved? Oh, yeah. Small and old. All wrinkly.”

“That’s right, that’s Wilhand! You saved him, and he brought you here so we could heal you. It’s been a week, but I took care of you.”

He blinked, seemingly processing all this information. Then he started to move as though to sit up, but fell back against the pillow with a groan of pain. 

“Don’t try to move too much!” Pike warned belatedly. “You’ve been hurt pretty badly. I did my best, but…”

“Need to piss,” he moaned. 

“Oh, uh, right. Of course you do. Don’t move, I’ll be back!” She ran across the room to get him a bucket, and then she helped him sit up. “Slow, slow, slow, there you go.”

He had to lean a hand against the wall as he peed because she couldn’t support his whole weight on her own, but the more he moved, the less he seemed to feel the pain. Goliaths, Pike mused, must have very strong constitutions, what with them fighting all the time. 

When he was done peeing Grog let out a deep sigh of contentment. He raised a hand and closed it into a fist, then opened and closed it a few more times, looking amazed. 

He said to Pike, “Pike.” She nodded, because he seemed to be expecting approval. “Pike, you do magic!” And then he gave her a big toothy grin.

Pike smiled back helplessly. “I do, a little.”

“Gnomes are magic.”

“Oh, not all of us do magic, this is just—”

“Good magic.” He thumped her on the back hard enough to make her tumble to her knees. “Good Pike.”

“Thank you,” Pike said weakly, trying to get her breath back.

Well, this had gone a lot better than she’d feared. Who knew, maybe they would become friends. 

\---

The next day of travel was cold and miserable, a fine drizzle of rain descending on them from the early hours of morning. At the back of the cart she was riding, Pike sat huddled up under a piece of oiled cloth to keep herself dry. Two soldiers flanked the cart on their horses, undistinguishable hooded figures from her limited point of view, although she knew one of them was Nedd, the young man she’d entertained the day before with stories of hers and Grog’s shared childhoods. Telling those stories had put her into a melancholic reminiscing mood and her dreams had been invaded with bits and pieces of memories of Vox Machina.

The gray, rainy day actually reminded her of another miserable day, years ago, when the twins and Tiberius, gone to get Scanlan out of the jail he’d managed to find himself locked in, had come back with a young, lanky human boy in tow. 

\---

“He said he’s got some kind of powerful weapon with him,” Vax told Pike by way of explanation. “He looked sincere enough. And we can always shake him off if it appears he’s lying.”

Pike nodded absent-mindedly, her attention on the newcomer. He stood a little away from the group, not glancing at them but staring ahead in the distance like he wasn’t aware that they were talking about him. Only the tense line of his shoulders gave him away.

“Hey, you!” Vax called out. They’d obtained no name from the young man, and Vax seemed to be of the opinion that it didn’t matter until they were sure he would stay. “Come here, will you.”

The young man walked up to them obediently. He moved in the careful way of someone who hid a great deal of bruises under his clothes and was doing his best not to show how much they pained him. One of those bruises marred his cheek, vivid and painful looking, and his hair was a shocking white color, like the hair of a very old man. He looked pale and sick, tired beyond words, but still he stood tall—taller than any of them save for Grog—and proud, his chin up in a wordless challenge. 

“Show us that weapon of yours,” Vax said, and at his words the rest of the party flocked over to them, intent and curious. “Let us see if it’s as powerful as you made it to be.”

Silently the young man slid a hand under his clothes, and it came back holding a strange instrument that looked like it was made of metal, with several long tubes on one end and a handle on the other. 

“What’s it called?” Scanlan asked, peering curiously at the weapon.

“It’s a gun,” the young man said. “I made it myself.”

He spoke softly, his accent northern as well as distinctively high-born. Posh, Vax would say. 

“What sort of weapon is it?” Vex asked, her chin hooked on her brother’s shoulder. “Long range? Those look like they’re made for projectiles.”

“Yes.”

“What about a demonstration?” Vax said, waving at a large tree. He shrugged off his sister and then threw three daggers at the tree, the blades forming a triangle on the trunk. “There’s your target. Show us.”

The young man spread his feet apart and extended the arm holding the weapon. One of his fingers was curled around a metallic piece that looked like the trigger of a crossbow. When he pulled it a loud explosion resounded in the air and Pike jumped, her hands flying instinctively to her ears. Then she looked back at the tree and saw the big hole at the center of Vax’s makeshift target. One of Vax’s daggers wobbled and dropped to the ground, not enough of the trunk left to be able to hold it.

For a long moment no one spoke, and the ensuing silence felt as brutal as the explosion had been. Vax let out a long, drawn-out whistle. 

“Damn,” Scanlan said. 

This was enough of a cue for the rest of the party. Vex and Keyleth applauded and whooped, and Grog exclaimed, “That was _amazing_! Do it again!” Tiberius grumbled something under his breath, maybe trying to figure out if any magic had been involved. Vax jumped off the boulder he’d been sitting on and went to clap the young man’s shoulder.

“Welcome to the party,” he said, grinning widely.

It was getting dark, so they made quick work of setting up camp and kindling a fire. Autumn was closing in and it got chilly at night, so the warmth of the fire was a welcome one and Pike let herself savor it for a moment before she looked around for their new addition. He’d helped out with the camp pretty efficiently but had barely said a word despite attempts at discussion from Vax, Scanlan and Keyleth. The others seemed to have decided to leave him alone for now, but Pike worried about his injuries. 

She found him sitting on a tree stump, so far from the fire that he couldn’t be feeling much of its warmth, his face swathed in moving shadows. She went to sit next to him, but at a comfortable distance so he wouldn’t feel like she was encroaching on his personal space.

“Hey,” she said, smiling up at him. “My name is Pike.” As he wasn’t replying immediately she hurried to add, “You don’t have to tell me your name if you’re not comfortable with it. But—maybe _a_ name?”

“No,” he said, looking dazed, and she realized he was probably only moments away from collapsing. He squinted at her like he couldn’t see her very well. “No, this is quite all right. My name is… Percy will do. It's short for Percival.”

“Nice to meet you, Percy.” She wondered at the slight hesitation before he’d given his name, but this was none of her business how he wanted to be called. “I’m a cleric, you know.”

“All right?”

“I mean, I can heal you, if you’ll let me. You seem to be in quite a bit of pain.”

“Oh. That’s—” He looked about to refuse for a moment, but then seemed to think better of it. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you. What should I—”

“You don’t have to do anything but sit still. I have to put my hands on you, if that’s okay?”

He nodded, although he was obviously uncomfortable with the closeness. She went through the spell quickly before she stepped aside, giving him space, and watched relief ripple across his face. He closed his eyes and swayed slightly. When Pike moved to catch his shoulder he sagged against her for a second. 

“Thank you,” he repeated, moving away with a little jerk, an embarrassed flush coloring his cheeks. “I’m feeling much better now.”

“Think nothing of it,” she said. “Welcome to the party, Percy.”

He smiled a little and then pulled back into himself like a turtle retracting into its shell. It would take a long time for him to start to open up, and even longer before they knew the story of how he had ended up in that jail. 

\---

As they travelled deep into the mountains their pace got slower, and riding the cart became more uncomfortable. Young Nedd offered to take Pike on his horse, and despite not being very fond of horses she accepted and rode behind him, trying to cling to his waist. 

“I didn’t know this journey was so perilous,” she said.

“But,” Nedd said, “I thought you’d gone to Whitestone multiple times.”

“I have,” Pike said, wondering how he knew so much. “But we usually used… different methods of travelling. My friend Keyleth has a spell that allows for quick transportation.”

“That must be so convenient.”

“Indeed it is.”

The echoes of a shrill cry bounced again the rocks and everyone looked up anxiously—the soldiers had told Pike they needed to watch out for Harpies, and she remembered her friends saying something about their horses getting taken on their first trip there. A shadow fell over them but it was just a big bird, an eagle maybe. They were close enough to Whitestone by now that Pike wondered if by any chance the bird could be Keyleth. Not that it seemed very likely, because even if Vox Machina were back from the Hells Keyleth had no reason to be flying around, but it was a nice thought.

Keyleth was Voice of the Tempest now. It felt strange to think of her earnest, bumbling friend with that title and yet Pike was confident that Keyleth would do great, even if Keyleth herself probably didn’t think so. She’d always lacked confidence in herself, and had always felt unsure about her status. Pike had noticed it the first time the party had learned of Keyleth’s purpose for her trip around the world. 

\---

“So you’re a princess,” Scanlan said. 

“You should have told us before!” Tiberius exclaimed. “Then we would have known to use the proper address.”

“The proper—What—N-no,” Keyleth stuttered, her face a startling shade of red. Her hands fluttered ineffectively like the wings of a clumsy bird trying to take off. “This isn’t like that at all. There’s no—proper address or anything.”

They were hiking across a big expanse of wild grass, the sun burning hot and high in the sky, and Keyleth looked like she was regretting the lack of places to hide. Pike glanced at the rest of the party’s faces, and they were all looking at Keyleth. Percy looked thoughtful, his eyes assessing as he considered Keyleth, while the twins wore the same wary masks that they had at the very beginning of their acquaintance. The name ‘Syngorn’ had come up a couple of times in conversations, and Pike knew that their father was some kind of elven nobility. The twins associating Keyleth with anything of their father’s couldn’t be a good thing. 

Poor Keyleth looked completely flustered from all the attention and Pike felt her heart go to her. When she started walking faster so that she would be ahead of the others, Pike waited a little, until everyone else had stopped focusing on Keyleth, before joining her.

Keyleth jumped when Pike popped up from under her elbow. “Oh, Pike,” she said plaintively. 

“Why do you look so down?” Pike asked. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not a princess! This is just—this isn’t how it works. I can’t be a leader if I don’t complete my Aramente. It’s not just an inherited position.”

“It sounds like a wise system,” Pike said cautiously. It was very hot and she felt like she was cooking inside her armor, the sweat running down her face and her back. She swept a hand across her brow and added, “I’m sure a lot of places would benefit from such a rule.”

Keyleth shrugged, then cast a furtive look over her shoulder at the rest of the group. “Everyone’s looking at me,” she muttered.

“Of course they are. But it’ll blow over when something else comes up and catches their attention.”

“They’re going to treat me differently.”

“Not if you still behave the same.”

The grass they were walking through went up to Pike’s waist, and she was so focused on fighting her way that she almost missed Keyleth’s next words.

“What if I _fail_?”

There was so much raw misery in that whisper that it made Pike look up. Keyleth’s mouth was pinched tight and her fingers knotted together in a painful tangle. 

“Oh, Keyleth.” Pike sighed and reached up to pat her friend’s arm. “I would tell you that you won’t fail, but that would be a lie because I can’t know what’ll happen and I’m not even sure what that Aramente of yours consists in. What I know if that if you keep thinking of how you will fail, then you’re definitely setting yourself for failure.”

“Oh.” Keyleth spread apart the grass with her staff to ease the way for Pike. “When you say it like that it makes sense, but—”

Pike flashed a brief smile at Keyleth to thank her for her help. “I know, I know,” she said. “Easier said than done. Just—don’t worry about it too much for now. You have plenty of time.”

The others were still trailing behind, and since Pike knew she wasn’t the fastest walker of the group, she guessed that they were probably giving her and Keyleth some space. It wasn’t like Keyleth’s discomfort was hard to miss. 

“Come on, Keyleth,” Pike said, and grasped Keyleth’s hand spontaneously. Keyleth startled a little but her fingers curled around Pike’s after a moment of hesitation. “Tell me about your home. Tell me about the Air Ashari.”

“Oh, Zephra is a wonderful place! It’s at the very top of a mountain range, and the winds are so strong that sometimes you can barely stand, and—”

Pike privately thought that Zephra sounded rather terrifying, but the happiness underlying each of Keyleth’s words was enough to make her smile, and she watched Keyleth relax into her story and lose her stressed-out air with deep satisfaction. Pike had a feeling that, no matter what Keyleth herself thought, things would be okay for her druid friend.

\---

“Miss Pike? Miss Pike!”

The sound of her name being called startled Pike out of her memory. Glancing at the sky she could see that the clouds had cleared away and the rain had relented, so she lowered her hood to be able to look around. The caravan had stopped on a ledge barely large enough to contain everyone; past the edge Pike could see the very steep slope, covered with fir trees, tumble downward until it faded into a misty ravine. 

“What is it?” she asked Nedd, who was the one who’d called. 

“One of the horses needs to be reshoed, so we’re stopping early for the night,” he told her. “We’ll get to Whitestone next morning.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t help a pang of disappointment, as she’d hoped to make it to the city before nightfall. “All right.”

He helped her dismount and she immediately made herself useful, keeping busy even as her thoughts traveled ahead, to Whitestone, to where she hoped she would meet with her friends. Her family. Grog, Vax and Vex, Keyleth and Percy. Even Tary, on the off chance that he’d survived this trip to the Hells and still wanted to stick with Vox Machina. She had hopes for him to fit well into the group eventually, if he took to heart her lesson that bonding with people started with learning their names. 

There was only one person that she pointedly tried to keep her thoughts away from. She managed it through the tasks of making a fire, preparing food, laying down sleeping bags. It was only once everyone was asleep and she was burrowed deep inside her own sleeping bag, trying to keep warm against the crisp iciness of a night in the mountains, that she let herself touch her earring and whisper softly, “Hey, Scanlan.”

“So, the rebuilding effort in Emon is going along nicely, and I think I’ve done good work there. You know, just my part, and I know I’m only one of many pairs of hands helping out, but it’s nice to feel useful. I know we killed Thordak and the other dragons, and that it was useful too, but it feels very different. More—rewarding, in a way. I’m not sure how much that speaks to you—this was never the kind of work you liked to do—but this is important to me. But I miss Vox Machina, too. I worry about them. I miss—” _you_. “Anyway, I hope they’ll be there when I arrive and that we’re finally rid of that Rakshasa. I don’t want to be attacked in my sleep by assassins ever again.”

She paused and listened very intently. She could hear the music of various soft breathings intermingling, one of them close to snoring, and, far away, the plaintive echoes of a wolf’s howl. 

“That’s all I had to tell you. It was a pretty quiet trip. One of the soldiers is, I found out, a pretty big fan of us, especially of Grog, and it always feels weird to realize that people even know who we are—” 

She realized that she was babbling and forced herself to stop. She closed her eyes, breathing against a small ball of pain blooming at the center of her chest.

“G’night, Scanlan. Sleep well, wherever you are.”


End file.
